


Interim

by Inevitable



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Season 6 Spoilers, get ready for the angst and comfort, takes place during season 6 finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2019-10-31 14:51:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17851652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inevitable/pseuds/Inevitable
Summary: In which Sherlock and Joan are no longer partners.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, I've been going back and forth on this fic for ages, posted it and deleted it before. Let me know if it's something worth continuing, please. I'd be so grateful!

It’s late, quiet and Sherlock sits alone in the darkness, frozen in place, in time as he stares at the empty fireplace. A case file lies open on his lap unsolved, ignored since he’d given it up hours ago. _(Days, if he’s honest, days since he’s showered or shaved or slept, days since he’s done much of anything at all.)_ Outside, it’s pouring heavily but he hears only the spaces between the raindrops, white noise to his addled brain. His sharp senses have been dulled, his mind is lethargic and slow. _(And he can’t help but wonder now if it was, in fact, his mind that he’s been using this better part of a decade, because he can’t seem to remember what the point of it all was. Only knows that had it not been a sacrifice for her own life, her happiness, the cost would have been too high, that he couldn’t have afforded it because there_ is _no bloody point without her.)_

Three months, it’s been nearly three months since he landed at Heathrow Airport, almost a quarter of a year since he’d left the Brownstone and come back to his flat on Baker Street. _(Eighty-six days, elven hours, and forty-two minutes, but who’s counting? Not him, certainly.) And London is dimmer than he remembers, pale, his world has been washed grey and everything seems far-off and distant. (She’s an ocean, a continent away, after all.)_ A lifetime ago, 221B had been a curious collection of paraphernalia, of experimentation and his wild pursuits, an animated illustration of his eccentric ways. Now, the apartment lies barren, sparsely furnished with a few boxes of his belongings scattered across the floor. _(Now, he knows the value of a shared kettle, of a single tube of toothpaste between two toothbrushes, knows intimately those things which make up a home and he is destitute.)_

And beneath the veil of rainfall, Sherlock hears a car skidding to a stop on the street, covers his ears as the sound grates on his nerves, brings him further out of his reverie with every revolution of wheels. _(He wants to drown out the world, drown in this sea because breath seems almost impossible now, and it would be easier to surrender, he thinks, to submerge himself underwater, surely more bearable than this terrible ache inside him.)_ There’s a voice then, muffled, and the dragging grind of a suitcase against pavement and he presses harder against his ears because it must be a loathsome next door neighbour or their houseguest. But he’s overtired and irritable, and has no interest in his neighbours’ late night shenanigans.

“Shut up,” he mutters.

The last time he rested was when she’d rung last week, after all, a phone call arranging the shipment of more of his things. There had been an update or two on her mother’s health, her father’s new book and very little else. Carefully chosen words and long, drawn-out pauses which had finally faded to exhaustion, to her shallow, even breaths across the receiver, which he’d cradled to his ear until he’d succumbed to sleep as well. _(And he’d dreamt of the Brownstone that night, of home and his honeybees, the echoes of an infant’s coos. Had woken the next morning with a burning behind his eyes, and a lump lodged heavily in his throat.)_ Then, closer now, louder than before Sherlock hears the chink of a lock, the sound of a door swinging open and clicking closed. _(And he hates these blasted, thin walls, hates this ridiculous house and queen and country, complete.)_

“I said. BE. QUIET,” he bellows.

He picks up the case file and flings it across the room so it collides with the wall and falls heavily. Presses his palms into the sockets of his eyes now and takes a deep steadying breath, two breaths and another until something dawns on him, suddenly. His eyes fly open and he jumps from his seat, spins toward the front door with his heart hammering in its cage. _(221A lies vacant. He does not have neighbours.)_ And for a split second he thinks he must be insane, that he’s fallen ill again and this is a hallucination, his subconscious mind presenting his deepest desire. But she’s there, standing before him, stepping forward into the patch of lamplight slanting in through the window. She is weary from travel, tired and dotted with rain, lugging her suitcase behind her. _(She has never looked so symmetrical to him.)_

“Watson?” he whispers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay everyone! I hope you like it. I think there will be one to two more parts to this story, so keep a look out :)

“Your doorbell wasn’t ringing,” she says, setting down her luggage. “So I had to pick the lock.”

And it’s as though something shifts in that instant, as if the ground beneath his feet had caved in when she’d stepped into the room and Sherlock stumbles, nearly falls to his knees. At the sound of her voice, his breath comes out in a trembling gasp, a deep exhalation of tears. _(Because it isn’t an illusion, a figment of his tortured mind. Because she’s really_ here, _and his faculties are_ suddenly _overwrought, overly sensitive. Because in truth, he never thought he’d see her again.) He_  is shaking his head in shock, in disbelief and his senses are rushing back to him tenfold, sights and sounds and smells are heightened once more, augmented. _(She is a sight for sore eyes, the sun which renders the sky bright again, washes his life in vivid technicolour.)_

“Watson,” he breathes. “Oh, Watson.”

And her step is loud then, crisp against the floorboards and she’s in front of him in a moment. Grabs ahold under his arms and supports him with her whole weight, props him up as he regains himself, as he stands shaking on his own two legs. Steadying him, studying him, her hands move deftly to his shoulders, his neck and settle on his face. And Sherlock feels almost feverish, feels the warmth of her palms suffuse over his cheeks, a heat that seems to permeate inside of him as she checks his vitals, examines him for signs of inebriation. _(Knows that it is only perfunctory, that her touch is merely clinical as she stares deeply into his eyes now, as her fingers close over his pulse but it kindles something deep in his chest, ignites the embers of a long extinguished fire and he stands very still.)_

“Did you use?” Watson asks, quietly. And there is no judgement there, only worry in the turn of her lip, only consternation in the line of her brow.

“Of course not,” he says, thickly. “I was tempted, certainly, but then I’d think of you, Watson, and I…” Sherlock trails off.

His eyes are suddenly burning at this unexpected encounter, this unforeseen union. He hadn’t reached for her when he’d found her that dreadful night after all, when he saw her lying there and the ambulance had come _(had only scrubbed harder against the floor, rougher to remove any stain, any evidence that she had been so badly hurt, that it was all his doing, his fault)_. Had not even shaken her hand when he bade her farewell that last day _(had patted the balustrade instead, the hard, unyielding wood of the brownstone because it was safer, easier, because he’d never been able to leave if he felt her skin on his)_ but now. Now, the light touch of her hands is a heavy weight upon his walls and something is cracking, crumbling between them. And he means to move away, turn his head aside but then her thumbs are at the corners of his leaking eyes, wiping tenderly under his lashes and it is the breaking, the bursting open of a dam and Sherlock is powerless against it, can do nothing to stem the tide of tears now as they as they spill onto his cheeks.

And his mind is rushing, attempting to rationalise this startling surge of sentiment, these emotions which are pouring out of him now, purging this bottomless ache. Postulating all the possible causes that could incite in him such a reaction, even as the first sob escapes his lips.Perhaps it was all the trauma they had suffered, he thinks, those weeks of pain and guilt together, these past few months apart. _(The years of anguish he is answerable to and his desperate desire to recompense that, atone for the grief he has caused her.)_ Or maybe it is precisely that he has denied himself of intimacy for so long _(that they both have)_ , that he is so completely overcome now, so wholly confounded by her attentions, this gentle affection she is bestowing upon him. ( _Yet he knows, knows it is not logic which leads him to lean into her palm then, nor reason that wedges it securely between his shoulder and his cheek. He can concede no impartial intention as his eyes flutter to a close and as he soaks in the heat of her, burrows slowly into that tender cup.)_

Back and forth, forth and back again, his cheek rubs slowly against her, _(rough stubble across silk)_ as he traces the lines of her palm with his nose and it calms him, soothes the tide of tears _(more, much more than that, it is silver hot fire in his veins and her touch galvanises him, jolts him back to life)._ And certainly, Sherlock is unaccustomed to not knowing, of this unintended, purposeful thing _(as he moves quietly, almost sensually against her)_ only knows that the bond they share is unparalleled, _(that she has not taken his heart so much as become it, pieced together every splintered shard until it was whole again)_. And for all his eloquence, his ability to articulate, to describe, there is no label for this intricate thing that they share, no crisp white certificate that can properly define them, demarcate this life they have led together. _(The same life that she had made possible for him, the one he had given up for her and yet, here they stand, living and breathing at once, once more.)_

And he’s not sure when exactly things escalate between them, cannot pinpoint the precise moment they began cross the threshold, but somewhere along the way, partnership too, had become inaccurate, lacking in some indefinable way. _(She is loyal to him, more faithful than any wife and he is devoted to her, has recited and renewed his vows in endless refrain)._ They are moving closer now, chests pressed together and her free hand is gripping the lapel of his shirt, bunching it between taut fingers. _(They are two people who love each other certainly, but the words he had spoken that last day in New York seem so strong, too sharp now in the dimly lit room_ ). His own hands remain rigid at his sides, wound tightly into fists _(rough, calloused hands that do not deserve to touch her, lest he ever hurt her, lest he ever mar her goodness_ ) even as his head is rings with alarm bells, with the pounding of his heart in his ears. And there is no rebuilding the wall, no turning back as her thumb lands lightly on his mouth, traces the line of his lip and he tastes saltwater on her skin.

He inhales sharply at the unexpected contact, at the jolt he feels deep in his stomach now and his eyes fly open to look at her. Her face is pink and soft and tender _(the way he's never seen her, unguarded, unarmed)_ and her own eyes are shining up at him _(the way she has never looked at him before, he is certain)_  and suddenly, Sherlock is angry,  _(with her, with himself)_  he is absolutely fuming. His breathing heavy and his body taut, he wrenches them apart, takes a shaking step away from where she stands.

“What are you doing here, Watson?”


End file.
